Snow Leopard Upgrade Outsells Tiger, Leopard

NPD is reporting that Apple’s Snow Leopard has outsold sales of both Leopard and Tiger in just two weeks. NPD not only believes Snow Leopard sales are over twice those of Leopard, but also that they are around four times higher than those achieved by Tiger.

“Even though some considered Snow Leopard to be less feature-focused than the releases of Leopard or Tiger, the ease of upgrading to Snow Leopard and the affordable pricing made it a win-win for Apple computer owners — thus helping to push sales to record numbers” Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD, said.

Snow Leopard, available as a $29 upgrade for Leopard users, mostly delivers under-the-hood improvements, building on top of its predecessor, Mac OS X 10.5. Tiger users also have the option to upgrade, but only by buying the $169 Mac Box Set, which includes iLife 09 and iWork 09, in addition to the Snow Leopard install disc. However, (although Apple seems to be against it) reports have confirmed that a direct Tiger-to-Snow Leopard installation is possible, as the install / restore 10.6 disc within the Mac Box Set is no different than the standalone retail copies of Snow Leopard.

After seeding Snow Leopard 10.6.1 test builds 10B503 and 10B504 to select developers, Apple quickly issued what became the first incremental update to the polished-up and highly optimized Snow Leopard. The maintenance release, available for both Client and Server users, contains mostly fixes, while addressing a single security issue – the outdated Adobe Flash Player plug-in.

By contrast, The Loop reports that Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 7 (a major revision to the buggy Windows Vista) has been skipped by 60 percent of companies, according to a survey in July. If these figures still stand today, Windows 7 may have a hard time beating Snow Leopard as an upgrade.